The Prospector

Among these people are members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), students from The University of Texas at El Paso,El Paso Community College and students from different high schools.

There was also a group of 13 people from Citizens Organized for Integral Community Development (CODIC) that particularly grabbed my attention because of their motivation to fight Asarco.

The age gap between the people from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso was high. Most of the students were in their 20’s, whereas people from CODIC were generally over 50 years old.

The language barrier between the people from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso also caught my attention during the strategy meetings.There were a few bilingual people traveling to Austin, who had to translate from English to Spanish for CODIC members and from Spanish to English to the younger crowd.

There were not as many UTEP students on the buses as I was expecting, and the younger people didn’t appear to be as energetic as I thought they would be.

They slept most of the time during the trip and I rarely heard anyone talking about Asarco or tomorrow’s hearing.
At Fort Stockton, Texas, where we took our lunch break, the inevitable movie moment happened.

Three buses stopped at McDonalds, but only two of them were from ACORN and CODIC.

The third bus ironically came with a pro-Asarco group of about 50 members.

They apparentl preferred to eat at KFC, and Malcolm Baker, who was traveling with the ACORN group, said the people from the pro-Asarco bus stared at him as if he were the worst of enemies.

I could sense that members of ACORN and CODIC were intimidated by the pro-Asarco members because Dave Cortez, environmental justice organizer for El Paso ACORN, used the time while we were eating lunch to talk about strategies for tomorrow’s hearing.

Cortez warned the students about the way people were going to perceive them at the hearing as “silly, and ignorant leftists.”

Our last stop before Austin was Fredericksburg, where people bought some groceries at Wal-Mart. Finally, we arrived at the Hotel Americas Best Value Inn at 9:20 p.m., where we checked in and ate dinner.

During the final strategy meeting for the day, many students still showed little interest compared to the residents of Ciudad Juarez and the older members of ACORN.

Where they tired or apathetic? I don’t know, but the older members were trying to inject some energy into them for tomorrow’s events.

The general atmosphere that I observed was that they were pessimistically expecting that the air permit was going to be approved and Asarco was going to reopen.

Daniel Arellano, former Asarco employee, gave them all a number where they could call in case Asarco reopened and if they felt the pollution was affecting them.

Tomorrow’s itinerary begins at 8 a.m., when the buses are leaving for TCEQ’s Austin headquarters and where people will begin to form a line in order to secure seats at the public hearing.

At 10 a.m. a delegation will depart to the Texas State Capitol to witness a press conference with state representatives.

The final hearing will begin at 1 p.m. and a post-hearing rally at TCEQ will be held from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Stay online for further posts and news updates.

Adriana Gomez Licon
The Prospector Staff Reporter